Sunday, October 5, 2014

In my kitchen - October 2014

In my kitchen, there is exciting produce. I am finding my local vegetable stalls delightful for unexpected (and cheap) fruits and vegetables. Last week, a highlight was rainbow chard. I've never seen or had it before, so am quite in awe of the colours!

I also picked up an enormous bowl of blueberries for £1. I put a fair chunk of them into a blueberry tart, the recipe for which shall come in due course.

I have also been enjoying figs, despite not understanding why they are so prevalent here. Most come from Turkey, which isn't particularly close to England, but they are everywhere at the moment! I've been making air mile excuses to enjoy some.

I don't actually like figs all that much plain, but do enjoy them in things. One highlight was a re-run of the vegan French toast I made for Vegan MoFo, but topped with figs and maple syrup. I had it for lunch, which is why some kale also features in the picture below.

Another fig-containing lunch was the salad below, with spinach leaves, tomatoes, figs, walnuts, and hummus. A little random, but delicious.

I am in a hummus phase at the moment, rating it even above nut butters for spreading on just about anything. So, hummus is featuring in the kitchen too. The picture below captured another random lunch, this time English muffins topped with hummus and yellow pepper...and a side of spinach with more hummus!

We have also been fortunate to receive vegetables from our downstairs neighbour, whose garden we overlook. I'm starting to think I have all the benefits of a garden (overlooking it, eating fresh vegetables) without any of the work! We've had a few batches of runner beans, as pictured below, as well as onions, spring onions, and most recently brussel's sprouts.

In the freezer is a new-to-me coconut frozen yoghurt I spotted at Waitrose. Made by The Coconut Collaborative, it is vegan and Waitrose stocked mango and berry flavours.

I selected the mango version, which I like but do find a little sweet. The company makes a natural coconut yoghurt, so I am hoping they may release a natural frozen yoghurt in the future.

In my kitchen are some smoked paprika rice cakes by Kallo, one of the few brands I've found that makes flavoured rice snacks. They are delicious and I will definitely be buying them again.

My kitchen has also featured some Australian Sakata rice crackers. They were kindly brought across by my Mum, who read my blog-based comments about small rice crackers not really existing here. I'm still impressed she carried them all this way!

Last but not least, in my kitchen I have been enjoying cocoa nibs. I bought a packet for the first time in some months (since well before we left Australia), and have been thrilled to rediscover how great they are for snacking. I'm having them on oats, as below, and blended frozen bananas.

22 comments:

wow your kitchen looks vibrant and colourful and healthy - I think I might send over Sylvia as she was asking me to buy blueberries today - we had a discussion about what they come in - I said punnet and she said packet so when you said bowl I wondered what you bought them in! Also love the rainbow chard, your neighbour's generosity and the rice cakes - so much yumminess

I definitely agree with 'punnet' for blueberries bought in packages :-) My local produce stalls tend to package up bowls of produce where everything is then £1 - so a bowl of apples, or peppers, or blueberries, etc. It doesn't work well if I want one of something (then I visit a supermarket) but is good value otherwise!

I've not seen that coconut frozen yoghurt before. I actually haven't shopped in Waitrose before, as we don't have one near us, but I am always hearing from people about how they have so much great healthy stuff.

We don't have a Waitrose very near us either, but living in London, it's quite easy to swing into one semi-regularly :-) The great healthy stuff is also quite expensive so it's probably safer not being too close!

it all looks so fresh and healthy in your kitchen. i have never tried cocoa nibs; i must give them a go. how weird that it is hard to get small rice crackers. what on earth do the English give their gluten-intolerant friends? :))

I, too, am going through a hummus phase as well. And figs are definitely a wonderful addition to salads. I wish they were more readily available here. There's a lot of roasting going on in my kitchen as of late (despite the weather being ridiculously warm still) - sweet potatoes, butternut squash, pumpkin...

Yep, snapping up figs here too. Fig and avocado salad is a big feature of my kitchen right now - there's a brief window where they're cheap enough I can ignore the food miles too! That rainbow chard is so pretty.

Kari, I love that you have rainbow chard in your kitchen at the same time that it's growing in our garden here in Sydney! Although ours are only red now - the pink and yellow versions seem to have disappeared. We use ours in the same way as spinach. Lovely gorgeous blueberries, my all time favourite fruit! What a huge colander full for a pound!!

That is so kind of your mum to bring you sakatas! Snacks just aren't the same without them!!!Oh I LOVE figs soooooo much - especially plain, or just on oats. I'm assuming that "chard" is the same as what we would call silverbeet over here? Except that I've never seen the red/rainbow version here at all.

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